Implicit and Explicit Conspiracy Associations Toward LGBT People Among Cis-Heterosexual and LGBT Participants

Conspiracy beliefs targeting LGBT people have gained attention in recent years, yet research on these beliefs remains limited and relies exclusively on explicit measures that are vulnerable to social desirability biases. Across three studies (Ntot = 565), we introduce the first implicit measure of such beliefs by assessing automatic associations between “LGBT people” and conspiracy-related concepts using the standard Implicit Association Test (IAT) or a variant (ST-IAT) among cis-heterosexual and LGBT participants. Cis-heterosexual participants implicitly associated “LGBT people” with conspiracy, but not at the explicit level. These associations were stronger among men and correlated with negative attitudes and greater endorsement of LGBT-related conspiracy theories. In contrast, LGBT participants associated conspiracy with “heterosexual people” at both implicit and explicit levels. These findings shed light on implicit conspiracy associations, how they can differ from explicit ones and across dominant and minority groups, providing theoretical insights for research and practical implications for behavior and interventions.